North West Libertarians September Meet Up

An informal meeting of libertarians in the North West will take place at the famous Lass O'Gowrie pub in Manchester: http://www.qype.co.uk/place/153967-Lass-O-Gowrie-Manchester Expected topics of conversation will include discussion of the new Independent Libertarian Network, as well as bidding fairwell to one of our brethren who is relocating to the dreaded South. Everyone's welcome - unlike the squalid gang of con men and conspiracy theorists who seized control of the old Libertarian Party, we don't do closed meetings. Come along if you feel like it, have a beer, have a chat, make friends and set the world to rights. See you there.

North West Libertarians Meetup 28 July

Libertarian Meetup (North West)
       
The Dee Hotel, 44 Grange Road, West Kirby, Merseyside, CH48 4EF
Saturday, 28 July 2012 - 13:00 - 16:00

Libertarians in the North West are meeting to discuss the Independent Libertarian Network and other issues of current interest to libertarians.

For more information or advice on car parking, contact Malcolm Saunders on malpoet@hotmail.co.uk.

The Independent Libertarian Network

Gavin Webb's efforts over the last few months have started to come to fruition and he has a new Libertarian political party formally registered with the Electoral Commission. The emphasis is very much on supporting local activism. It's early days yet, but I think it has potential. Visit the website, have a look at the constitution and see if it's the kind of setup you might be interested in getting involved with:

http://www.independentlibertarians.com/

 

Some Things Never Seem To Change

So there I was at an antiques fair in Stockport, looking for potential stock for my fledgling business when this bit of ephemera caught my eye and I just had to have it for my own interest. I admit that I collect some odd things, and I've been in the habit of accumulating political literature since my days as an activist with the former Libertarian Party – this may be the oldest example of an election leaflet that I've ever seen though:

It seems even in the 1880s local politicians were screwing the citizenry into the ground with excessive taxes!

THOUGHTS ON A FUTURE LIBERTARIAN PARTY

INTRODUCTION

As far as I know, there have been two explicitly Libertarian parties formed in the UK in recent history. The first one was the Independent Libertarian Party, formed by Antoine Clarke and Paul Marks in 1998, and since disbanded (follow this link for a little bit of background: http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/tactn/tactn025.pdf ). I know very little about the history of this organisation, and nothing about why it no longer exists. My experience was with the Libertarian Party (often wrongly described as the Libertarian Party UK, or LPUK for short). That party was founded with high hopes in September 2007 but never got properly organised and was taken over in a coup mounted by former members of the National Co-ordinating Committee (NCC) last year. Although the Party still exists as a registered entity, the membership list and bank account are not under the control of the legitimate NCC and has failed to put up any candidates in this year's local elections. The gang that hijacked the Libertarian Party run a website and take people's money – your guess is as good as mine as to what that money is used for.

Since some of us do actually want an effective Libertarian Party to exist in this country, there's been some discussion recently about starting up a Mark 3 version – hopefully learning from the mistakes of the past with the benefit of recent experience. This initiative is being headed up by Gavin Webb, the only councillor the Libertarian Party ever had – if you'd like to register your interest in a new party, please visit his website http://gavinwebb.com/libertarians/ (no obligation). There's also discussion going on at Libertarian Home as to what shape it should take: http://libertarianhome.co.uk/

What follows are my thoughts on what a new Libertarian Party (whatever name we adopt for it) should be trying to achieve, and how it should be organised.

I'd better tell you a bit about myself first, so you can decide for yourself how well-qualified I am to pontificate on this subject:

My name is Stuart Heal and I live in Manchester. I joined the Libertarian Party as soon as it started recruiting members, early in 2008 (Membership Number 12). This was my first experience of being a member of a political party. I co-wrote the weapons policy and became the Regional Co-ordinator in the North West (only because no-one else wanted the job). A couple of weekends in 2009, I travelled to Wisbech in East Anglia to help deliver leaflets as part of our first election campaign, when Andrew Hunt stood for the local council. The following year, in 2010 I stood in the local elections in Manchester. I was due to stand again the following year, but changed my mind, partly due to being too busy to take time off from my job and partly due to the lack of support for local candidates from the NCC.

THE MISSION

The objective of a functioning libertarian party should be to promote the ideals of small government and personal and economic freedom, and to make sure that libertarian-minded people are elected to positions of power.

Note the last part of that statement: “make sure that libertarian-minded people are elected to positions of power”. Some fools maintain that libertarians seeking power is a contradiction. The reality is that governments exist and will continue to do so as long as homo sapiens exists – possibly humanity may evolve beyond the need and desire for governments one day, but that day may not dawn for a million years. In the here and now, we have governments and will continue to do so – so they should be staffed by people who understand the legitimate limits of government power and who mean to increase the freedom of the individual at any opportunity. Opting out of the political system just means handing power over to people who don't think like us.

ORGANISATION

One of the reasons the Mark 2 Libertarian Party (hereinafter referred to as LPUK) failed is that it didn't have an effective organisation – by that I mean an organisation suited to a small political party, and one that ensured adequate oversight and internal communication. It also failed to utilise our greatest resource – individual members.

The organisation of the new party (hereinafter referred to as the Party) has to be suited to our likely size (likely to be in the low hundreds for the first few years) and geographical spread (all over Great Britain and possibly beyond). So it needs to be as simple as possible, and every member has to be able to do something useful, even if they're the only libertarian in their neighbourhood.

I envisage three levels of organisation – national, local and individual.

NATIONAL ORGANISATION

There needs to be a governing committee of some kind. The bare minimum would consist of the Party Leader, Chairman (possibly combining those jobs?), a Treasurer, a Membership Secretary and a Communications Director. Call it five bods in total – a large enough group to have a sensible division of labour and small enough to make it easy to make decisions quickly. All officers should be democratically elected by the membership at the Annual General Meeting, and their job will be to do the day to day admin work, establish the organisation, approve and support candidates, administer the website (including a members' forum), produce and distribute a members' newsletter, make propaganda/campaign material available to members, put together a Party manifesto and approve the formation of local branches. They would also have the power to suspend or expel members under certain circumstances.

Some will mistakenly describe the list of powers and responsibilities described above as authoritarian or unlibertarian – it isn't. A political party is a voluntary organisation – if you're not happy with the way it's run you're free to stand for election to the governing committee, to resign from the Party or not to join it in the first place. And to have a chance to achieve anything, the Party also has to have an organisation, enforceable rules and discipline.

Most importantly, proper attention has to be paid to the internal workings of the national committee itself, in order to avoid the mistakes of last time, so I'm going to go into more detail about this:

Trust no-one

It shouldn't be necessary to tell Libertarians no to trust leaders, but for some reason most of us who were in LPUK let our guards down in this respect – and ended up having the party stolen from us. The new Party should be organised on the assumption that even the most respected people are going to make mistakes or go off the rails from time to time – and that's not counting outright criminality. So we need safeguards. I have four ideas about this:

First, I think that anyone who is elected to the governing committee should be required to sign a legal contract agreeing to them to comply with the Party constitution and to hand over any records, access to bank accounts etc to their successors on leaving office.

Second, no-one should have sole access to either the financial records and bank accounts or to the membership records. There should be a Treasurer and Deputy Treasurer, and a Membership Secretary and Deputy Membership Secretary (or whatever titles are agreed on). That's the best protection I can think of against a repetition of what happened last year, when the coup plotters managed to monopolise control of both the financial records and membership list.

Third, I don't believe that any money should be released from the Party bank accounts unless the expenditure is approved by a majority of the committee.

Fourth, I believe the committee should have regular face-to-face meetings – at least once every couple of months – it's hard to gauge someone's character when your main means of communication is by email.

LOCAL ORGANISATION

In most areas, for the first few years, I would expect local organisation to be non-existent, but developing organically as geographical membership clusters emerge. The way I see local organisations emerging would go something like this: a member wants to get in touch with others in his area, so puts a message on the online forum and/or the newsletter asking people to contact him to arrange informal pub meetups. When there are enough members in a defined area that comes under the same local authority (ie at least 10 members in a particular town or city) they can apply to the central committee to set up a local Branch. This would have it's own local committee running it, it's own budget, authorisation to produce it's own leaflets using Party templates but covering local issues, the ability to select their own candidates for local elections and write their own local manifestos, contact the media as official Party representatives etc. This is going to be a vital development, because the Party will never make any headway in national politics until it has a good track record at the local level. The national committee should do whatever it can to support local branches once they're formed, including providing leaflet templates, instructions on how to mount a local campaign and stand for election, support on the Party website with contact details, and financial support within reason. I absolutely believe that LPUK would have had more local candidates if more support from the centre had been forthcoming.

THE INDIVIDUAL

LPUK had such a small membership (never more than a few hundred) that there must have been people who were literally the only members in their county. You might think that with no organisation in the area, there'd be nothing an individual member can do – but I don't believe a small party can afford to waste a single potential activist, and libertarians are supposed to believe in the potential of the individual. So I see part of the national committee's job as being to support these isolated members and give them something to do. Not long before last year's coup, during the run up to the local elections, I developed an idea for an ongoing series of leaflets called “The Libertarian”, which I tried to get the NCC interested in. The idea was to produce a monthly two-page bulletin in a populist style that could be downloaded as a PDF file from the party website by any party member or supporter who wanted to print a few off and distribute them in his area. Each issue would have covered two or three national news stories, but from a libertarian perspective, and including contact details for the party. I'd already designed and distributed a local version of this the previous year, as a warm-up leaflet for my aborted second local election campaign in Manchester. The advantage of this is that it would cost the Party nothing in money - just a day or two's work for whoever edits the monthly bulletin. Contributions to it could even be solicited via the Party members' forum (assuming we have one, which I think we should). So any individual member can print (say) 100 copies off once a month and deliver them round his area. If a 100 members do that, that's 10,000 leaflets delivered nationwide per month – the publicity equivalent to an election campaign without any money being spent by the Party. It seems to me that this could be particularly useful to people wanting to set up libertarian societies in universities, or members of more general political societies who want to promote a libertarian point of view – thus hopefully lining up the next generation of Party members.

So that's my idea for what the Party organisation should look like – it needs fleshing out of course, preferably by people with more experience of running political organisations than me. Getting the organisation right this time is vitally important in my view. But once it's set up, what sort of strategy should the new organisation adopt? How is it to achieve its goals?

ELECTORAL STRATEGY

When LPUK was set up, there was a lot of grandiose talk about putting up multiple candidates for Parliament – one fool on the forum even said we'd form a government in 15-20 years. There was very little discussion about local politics. We were trying to run before we'd even learned to walk.

START SMALL, THINK BIG

Let's say you wanted to become a millionaire – you dream of being the owner of a big concern, sitting in your office in a skyscraper full of loyal employees all doing your bidding, getting on the phone and making million pound deals, inspecting your factories and warehouses.

But you haven't got any money – you're struggling to pay your rent, utilities and council tax.

So what do you do?

Do you max out all your credit cards and gamble all your money on one big, extremely dodgy deal that will either net you your first million or wipe you out completely?

Do you give up and resign yourself to a life of poverty?

Or do you concentrate on what you can do? Do you use your decrepit second-hand computer in your spare room to set up a little micro-business which will only bring in £10-£20 a week at first? That £10-£20 a week may not be much, but it's money you wouldn't have had otherwise, it's money you can put to one side to build up a stake for when you feel ready to try something more ambitious – and in the meantime you're building up experience and a reputation. Starting off small, you're at least making some kind of progress and giving yourself a chance – and maybe one day you will be that millionaire.

Politics works the same way. New political parties don't just sweep into power – that takes a lot of money, and even more importantly, name recognition. In my opinion putting up Parliamentary candidates is totally futile, except under exceptional circumstances – no LPUK Parliamentary candidate ever got as much as 1% of the vote, whereas Andrew Hunt got nearly 8% in our first local election campaign. It seems to me quite clear that the main effort should be at the local level – people are much more willing to give minority parties a chance in local elections, especially if the candidates focus on local issues – this is why UKIP, the Green Party and even those losers in the BNP have local councillors. And the idea of us ever having an MP before we have a strong local presence is so ludicrous it's hardly worth thinking about.

Apart from the near impossibility of getting anyone elected to Parliament in the near future (say the next 20 years) there are excellent reasons for Libertarians to try to get elected to their local councils. Councils very often have more of an effect on people's daily lives than the national government. It's your local council that will steal your house using a Compulsory Purchase Order and knock it down to make way for a supermarket. It's your local council that will deny you planning permission to improve your house – or if they do grant permission, they will then use the improvements to reclassify your house in a higher Council Tax band. And if you can't afford to pay your Council Tax – or even if you're just a few weeks late paying – it's your local council that will take you to court and send the bailiffs to your door (and I can tell you from personal experience that a visit from the bailiffs is no fun at all). People who find local politics boring aren't paying enough attention to what goes on in their neighbourhood – you should do, it's where you live. I bet if you bought a copy of your local paper tomorrow and read right through it, you could find at least one local issue that can be attacked from a libertarian angle.

Local election campaigns can also be quite cheap to run. I only spent about £90 on mine, not counting petrol and shoe leather. To stand for Parliament you have to pay a deposit of £500 just to get on the ballot. Even better, some local councils – away from the urban centres – are under-staffed. Andrew Withers walked into his parish council seat uncontested last year, and didn't have to spend a penny on campaigning. A friend of mine who lives in a smallish town once joked that if I moved to his town we could take over the local council between us.

So local politics is cheap to get into and important enough to bother with. It can also be a stepping stone to bigger things. Let's say we do get some councillors elected in the next few years. One of them serves a term or two as a councillor and gets a reputation among the voters for being good at his job – as he's popular with the people in his ward, he might decide to have a go at standing for Parliament, and the Party might think it's worthwhile supporting him. Who knows what could happen? But we won't get anywhere without having some “form” at local level first. All politics is local politics.

OTHER CAMPAIGNING ACTIVITIES

There's no reason we can't attach ourselves to any political demonstrations that support causes that we're in sympathy with – No2ID, any campaigns against future gun bans, drug legalisation etc. In those circumstances we should do what groups like the Socialist Workers Party do – print up our own banners, leaflets etc. It doesn't have to be expensive, it's cheap publicity and can attract new members.

When there's a demonstration that we're opposed to, we can also stand on the sidelines and hand out leaflets giving our point of view to members of the general public. In those situations, a slightly lower profile and a good pair of running shoes might be advisable, but I personally do get sick of seeing the same old gangs of socialists demonstrating for the same old discredited causes with no-one opposing them.

JOINT MEMBERSHIPS

I'm coming towards the end of this article, you'll be glad to know, but there's one last area I want to mention. LPUK had a policy against members also being members of other political parties. This was a policy I supported at the time, but in the last few months I've had second thoughts and I believe the new Party should allow joint memberships. The reason LPUK didn't allow joint memberships was that this was thought to create a conflict of interest – if someone's a member of (say) LPUK and the Lib Dems, who should he campaign for at election time? It seemed to me at the time that you should just commit to one party – but this forced people to make a choice, and we definitely lost members because of this policy. Apart from anything else, it was practically unenforceable. One guy stood as a local candidate for UKIP and the election was over before we found out and expelled him. To his credit, he accepted his expulsion with good grace. His reason for standing as a UKIP candidate and not an LPUK candidate was that they had an organisation in the area to support him – I can understand this, having stood as a candidate myself. I think the benefits of allowing joint memberships outweigh any potential drawbacks, and include the following:

The potential to have a larger membership base. We know there are libertarians in UKIP, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party. By excluding them, we'd be depriving ourselves of potentially useful members.

In a lot of areas there will be no Party organisation – we just won't have enough members. So if isolated members want to join a larger party in order to have some kind of influence over the local political scene, I see no reason to stop them, especially if the candidate they're supporting is libertarianish anyway.

Gaining experience. LPUK had a lot of members with no previous political experience – probably the majority. The new Party will probably have the same problem. By joining more established parties, members can potentially learn a lot about how to run campaigns properly. And a guy who spends time leafleting for (say) UKIP in one election might develop the self-confidence to stand as a Party candidate next time, who knows?

Influencing other parties. If we're ever to change the political landscape of this country in a more libertarian direction – and I think we can – we need to influence members of more established parties and try to get them to adopt more liberal ideas. So joining these parties, going to meetings, talking to members and maybe circulating leaflets seems to me to be worthwhile.

Reality check: Associating with people who have different political opinions can have the beneficial effect of forcing us to double check our own beliefs to make sure they're still in line with common sense. There's a danger that probably all radical political parties face – when activists are only associating with other activists of the same stripe, they can lose their common sense to theory. I've been in libertarian meetups where people have argued for or against a particular policy idea based not on whether it's morally correct, or practical, but on how “libertarian” or “unlibertarian” they think it is. One ex-leader of LPUK even commented in a blog post that it would be “unlibertarian” to intervene in a mugging unless the victim asked you for help! That's how far off the rails theory can take you – so yes, I think associating with people who aren't quite on the same wavelength as you can help you stay anchored to reality, as well as honing the debating skills.

CONCLUSION: CAN WE SUCCEED?

I think we can. The present might look fairly bleak and statist, but there's no reason for the future to go on in the same vein. It's important to remember that what we now call libertarianism would have been called liberalism in the 19^th Century – and the Classical Liberals did OK. The 20^th Century was dominated by statist ideologies, especially the twin evils of socialism and racism. It's time for the pendulum to swing back, and I think current social and technological trends are pulling society in a more individualist direction – the rise of the internet has meant that not only can people promote their political views more easily, and network more easily, it's also made it possible for practically anyone to have a go at setting up a business from home – look at people who make a living through eBay for instance. That's going to give rise to a more entrepreneurial small-business culture than has existed in the past – just the type of people who are our most natural constituency. It's also made it easier to raise money for charity, lend money to small entrepreneurs (or get a loan if you need one), do research etc. I think the 21^st Century will be dominated by individualist philosophies just as much as the 20^th was dominated by collectivist ideas. We can be part of that.

Can we ever form a government. Maybe, I don't know. Not in the short term, but longer term, who can say? Do we need to? If we can take control of some councils and show how to apply libertarian ideas to improve our communities, if we can influence other parties by sharing members with them – will we even need to get into Parliament? Not necessarily, as long as people with the right ideas are getting elected, whatever flag they fly under. If a future Prime Minister stands up in Parliament and introduces a raft of legislation including the abolition of Income Tax, re-legalisation of pistols and concealed carry, the scrapping of most of the red tape that gets in the way of small businesses functioning, re-introduction of trial by jury in all criminal cases – he's getting a round of applause from me even if he's a member of the Labour Party!

We can win. Victory means getting the government off our backs, whether we're actually in government or not. As long as we've got a clear idea what we want, as long as we're willing to put the work in, and as long as we're properly organised, we can do it.

So those are my thoughts on how a new libertarian party should be organised and how it should operate. It's not a complete blueprint, just an outline – better-qualified people than me would need to flesh it out. But I think it's workable.

Of course there are other options...

NEW LIBERTARIAN PARTY - URGENT UPDATE

I've received the following message from Gavin Webb, who is heading up the current initiative to set up a new part that's fit for Libertarians to join:

Today my hosting provider suspended my account for alleged copyright violations. Upon contacting them it transpires that Ian Parker-Joseph on behalf of the Libertarian Party UK had made the complaint on the basis that by using the url libertarianparty.org.uk I was in fact passing off and trading as the Libertarian Party UK. Please can you now direct anyone interest in seeing a new registered libertarian political organisation on the scene to visit www.gavinwebb.com/libertarians. Thanks.

......................................................

Note from Stuart:  Gavin Webb is one of the more useful members the Libertarian Party has ever had, having been our only sitting councillor and one-time Communications Director.  Unlike the sleazy little gang that siezed control of the Party's assets last year, he has actually done a lot to promote Libertarianism through the democratic political process.  He's got the backing of what's left of the active membership of the Libertian Party, and if the lying conspiracy theorist Ian Parker-Joseph thinks that a cheap trick like this is going to stop the loyalist faction from establishing the new and more effective libertarian party that this country needs, he's even crazier than I think he is.

A NEW POLITICAL PARTY FOR LIBERTARIANS?

With the assets of the Libertarian Party still in the hands of an unelected gang of liars, conspiracy theorists and conmen, some of us who have been active in promoting Libertarian values via the electoral process in the past and don't intend seeing that effort going to waste are now interested in starting a new Libertian political party so that we can move forwards and do some actual politics. At the moment, the initiative is just at the level of finding out how many people would be interested in supporting such a venture. Gavin Webb - former Communications Director and the only councillor the Libertarian Party ever had - has set up a website where people can register their interest:

http://libertarianparty.org.uk/

If you understand that libertarians have to be involved with the political process in order for this country to progress in the right direction, please register your interest - you won't be committing yourself to anything.

Two More Questions To Ask Andrew Withers

Just in case I don't get there on time, here are two more questions for any loyalist Party members who are attending tomorrow's phony AGM to ask Andrew Withers:

Question 1: Andrew Withers was elected unopposed as a councillor in Clevedon last year. But he stood as in independent. Why did he choose to do this, instead of standing as a Libertarian Party candidate? That would have been an extremely easy win for the Party with no extra effort - our first elected councillor. Withers was still Party Leader when he submitted the nomination papers for his candidacy, and this was prior to the storm triggered by the Anna Raccoon blog. A party leader's job is to promote their party, and having people in elected office (even on parish councils) is generally thought of as being a good thing by small parties on the grounds that it enhances their credibility. So why did Whithers stand as an independent? I did send him a polite email at the time, asking him about this - the reply I got was rambling, incoherent and aggressive in tone. It did include the following statement: "My reasons for not standing as a Libertarian Party candidate in the local elections ? because I would not have secured a seat." And yet the election was unopposed, so what sense does that make?
Why would a party leader who sincerely wants to advance the interests of Libertarianism in this country not stand as a Libertarian candidate?

Question 2: During the run up to the local elections last year, in my capacity as North West Regional Coordinator (and therefore a member of the National Coordinating Committee), I asked how many candidates we had, who and where they were. After all, a small party needs to mobilise its members to support whatever candidates it has. Andrew Withers refused to disclose this information to the NCC. As a consequence of this, the information was not available to put on the Party website so that people could volunteer to help our candidate(s) by leafleting etc. And what else is a political party for, if it's not to support it's candidates? To this day I only have definite knowledge of one Libertarian Party candidate in last year's elections. Despite this betrayal by Andrew Withers, he actually got a fairly decent result.
Why did Andrew Withers betray our candidate(s) in this way?

Don't let Andrew Withers get away with his usual evasive replies and bully tactics. Get straight answers out of him for both these questions, it's your right to know. And don't forget to take a digital camera along to the "AGM" - I can put any digital video footage submitted to me on YouTube easily enough.

The AGM That Isn't, Run By The Leaders Who Aren't

Before the Libertarian Party website was taken down, supposedly “for maintenance”, it was announced – very quietly announced, in fact it was buried in the news section – that there was going to be an Annual General Meeting this coming Saturday. Here are the full details:

Party AGM 24th March 2012 10am
Committee Room 2 Clevedon Town Council
44 Old Street, Clevedon, North Somerset

Membership Card required for entry and £5 towards venue costs apply to membership@libertarianpartyuk.com

Federal Constitution to be approved

New Manifesto for 2012 In Process

There are several things wrong with this announcement:

1. The membership have not been directly informed – at least no member known to me has been emailed about this. Certainly I received no notification, which I certainly should have done being both a regional co-ordinator and long-standing member (Party Membership Number 12).


2. The last Libertarian Party AGM was held in late 2010. The Party Constitution says that AGM's must be held no further apart than 15 months.


3. The venue is extremely hard to get to.- the nearest railway station is nearly 4 miles away. Anyone would think the “leadership” didn't want ordinary members attending, especially in view of the early start time.


4. The requirement for membership cards to be produced. I know of only one member in the North West region who has received one. Have the majority of active and formerly active members been blacklisted?


5. The £5 entry fee. The group that is organising this event has no authority to ask for money.


6. “Federal Constitution to be approved”. Not debated, but approved. Again, the group calling the so-called AGM has no authority to do this. This has not even been discussed by the National Co-ordinating Committee – even then it would be up to a vote by the attending members.


7. “New Manifesto” - same as above. They have no authority.

Now the reason that the group organising this meeting has no authority to do any of this is that they're not the NCC. During the internal crisis that was triggered by the Anna Raccoon blog last year, former Party Leader Andrew Withers resigned and has never been re-instated. That's right, the man who currently claims to be both Party Leader and Treasurer isn't even a member. Withers was Party Treasurer until the last AGM, in 2010, then he was elected Party Leader and another member was elected Treasurer. Unfortunately – and for reasons best known to himself – Withers failed to turn over the accounts and control of the Party bank accounts to the new Treasurer. Why would he do this unless he has something to hide?

The upshot of all this is that control of the Libertarian Party bank accounts and – even more importantly – the membership list are no longer in the possession of the NCC. Instead they're in the hands of a small unelected group centred around Andrew Withers, Nic Coome and Ian Parker-Jospeph. This has left the Party completely paralysed since last year, and with no obvious prospects of recovery. People who really want to promote a libertarian alternative to mainstream politics would not act in this way – as a matter of fact, Withers' group did actually try to de-register the Party last year, without success.

So we have an unelected group holding a fake AGM in a place and time that most members will find it difficult to access. This looks very much like Withers and his gang trying to complete the coup they started last year. They won't profit from this.

Here's my advice to any Libertarian Party members who plan to attend this so-called AGM:

1. Don't pay the £5 they're asking for. Withers and his mob have no authority to ask you for any money, and there's no way of knowing how the money is going to be spent. The money raised by the Party prior to last year's implosion has not been properly accounted for, despite the best efforts of honest members to obtain this information.


2. Ask Withers for a full accounting of Party funds. It's YOUR money, you have the right to know how it's been spent.


3. Demand that Withers and his cronies surrender control of the bank accounts, financial records and membership lists to the legitimate NCC without delay.


4. Ask Withers why the IT contractor who was in charge of re-vamping the website doesn't seem to have been paid.


5. Make sure your questions, and any answers you receive, are properly recorded, preferably with a digital video camera. Andrew Withers, Nic Coome and Ian Parker-Joseph all have a history of dishonesty, so it's as well to record the proceedings. If there are two or three people with cameras and/or voice recorders present, so much the better.

I joined the Libertarian Party because I believed that it was necessary to have openly libertarian people taking part in the electoral process and promoting libertarian ideas in order to counteract the statist trend of the last century. I still believe this to be necessary – two years of relative inaction by the current government has shown that just getting rid of Labour was not enough. There's a lot of good work that can be done by an effective Libertarian Party, especially at local level. But the Libertarian Party will never be an effective organisation as long as it's resources are under the control of a gang of crooks.

North West Libertarians December Meetup

For those who haven't seen the notice on Facebook, there will be an informal meetup of libertarians in the Kro2 Bar, Oxford Road, Manchester on Sunday 11th December, starting about 1.00pm. This will be the last North West libertarian meetup of 2011, but hopefully not the last one ever.

This has been a bad year for the Libertarian Party. For those who aren't aware of what's been going on, a few months ago the Party's assets – mainly the bank account and membership records – fell into the hands of a small unelected group who have refused to hand these records over to the legitimate National Coordinating Committee. This group is headed by the former Treasurer, who failed to hand over the financial records to the incoming Treasurer. The former Treasurer had been elected Leader at last year's AGM, but later resigned following allegations of misconduct. Unfortunately he failed to register this fact with the Electoral Commission, for reasons which I can only speculate about, and gathered a group of his chronies about him to take control of the Party. In flagrant breach of the Party constitution, they have also failed to hold an AGM this year – I can only assume that this is because they don't want to face any awkward questions from the membership. At one point, they even tried to de-register the Party, but failed because they needed the cooperation of one member of the legitimate NCC, who naturally refused to do this. The situation at the moment is that, although the Libertarian Party still exists as a legal entity, there is no organisation and no internal communication.

Some people have said that this proves that a Libertarian Party is not a practical proposition. I disagree. Other countries have thriving Libertarian Parties, I see no reason for Britain to be different. The way I see it, the real problem is that we didn't give enough thought to how we should be organised when we were first setting up. There was never any real support for local activism. There was also not enough oversight of the leadership's activities. These are lessons we can learn from in the future. Because I believe that there is a place for an effective Libertarian Party in this country. It could be that the current party will end up being de-registered, in which case the way will be open for a group of ex-members with honest intentions to set up a successor organisation. Or maybe the cabal who have siezed control of our party will see sense and step aside.

Either way, a Libertarian Party of some kind will rise from the ashes.

Some useful Blogs

As it's gone quiet on here recently. I thought it would be useful to point our readers in the direction of some blogs by current and former LPUK members


Libertarian Party - http://www.libertarianpartyuk.com/

Thoughts on Morality - Rational Anarchist - http://thoughtsonmorality.blogspot.com/

Anna Raccoon - http://www.annaraccoon.com/

Stuart Heal's Sell a Man a Fishing Rod - http://sellamanafishingrod.blogspot.com/

Take care,

Daz

Let's expose another statist lie...

So Cigarettes and alcohol go up again in the budget - in tobacco's case a whopping 7% rise means paying £7 for a deck of 20 is a not unusual occurrence in the shops. Of course, our paternal big brother who always knows best has been telling us for years that this is to offset the costs to the precious 'sacred cow' of the NHS in terms of liver failure, lung cancer and what have you. However, I distinctly remember a buget 10 years ago where the price of cigarettes went up to around £4 for 20 when we were told the increased duty would pay for these expenses. Makes you wonder why the state never got off the escalator. The suspicion that the real intent was of course to change people's behaviour is clear, and there was just the faintest hint of his before the budget when Dave boasted about the reduction in the number of smokers nationally. It is of course no business of the state to use taxation to change a person's lawful behaviour patterns, and part of me wishes a government would actually have the balls to follow through its statist instincts and propose banning tobacco and alcoholic drink of all kinds. Then we could finally have an honest discussion about the kind of country we want to live in. Meanwhile, here's one for all those with private medical insurance - as your filthy drinking and smoking habits cost the NHS the square root of nothing, keep all your receipts for cigarettes, whiskey whatever and at the end of the financial year, write to your local HMRC asking for some kind of rebate. After all, it's your medical insurance, paid for out of your own pocket that is picking up the tab. £20 says their reply will be an admission that the it was never about money it was about behaviour control. Wouldn't it be nice to see the bullies and control freaks being honest with us about their agenda for once?

Debating AV

Here's a recent televised debate between the Establishment politician Margaret Beckett and Jonathan Bartley, who heads the campaign group "Yes to Fairer Votes". Personally I think Mr Bartley got the upper hand in this debate, but you make your own mind up:



On 5th May, we're all going to get the chance to vote for or against the introduction of the Alternative Vote system (AV), a seemingly small but significant change to the existing First Past The Post (FPTP) system. The difference with AV is that you number the candidates in order of preference, so you put 1 next to the guy you want to elect, 2 next to your second choice and so on. If your first choice doesn't get enough votes to be elected, then he's eliminated and your vote gets transferred to your second choice. This should eliminate the problem of tactical voting - instead of voting for whoever you think has the best chance of beating the guy you really don't want to get in, regardless of whether you like them or not, you can give your first preference to your favoured candidate without fear of your vote being wasted.

Although it's not a proportional system, it's an improvement on the current one. Not only will it eliminate wasted votes, it should also give a clearer picture of what kind of government the electorate actually want. The Libertarian Party supports this proposed reform, as do a broad range of other minority parties. Funnily enough, it's less popular with Establishment politicians, who seem to be generally happy with the system that got them elected (very often on small minorities).

5th May is going to be an opportunity to introduce a beneficial constitutional reform and give us, the general public, a bit more say in how this country is run. Don't miss the chance to vote Yes to fairer votes.

Happy New Year from the Libertarian Party

The North West branch of the Libertarian Party would like to wish everyone a peaceful and prosperous new year.

It's true that the country is still in a bad economic situation, and will be for some time (at least in my opinion), but things can change for the better - it's just taking longer for us to recover from the recession than it should do, but even the most misguided economic policies can't completely stifle the entrepreneurial spirit.

2010 wasn't a bad year for the Libertarian Party. For the first time since our formation in late 2007, we fielded four candidates for election at the same time - two in the General Election and two in the local elections. No big breakthroughs yet, but you don't just set up a new party and get swept to power overnight. Every election we fight, we'll get better at it and we'll get better known, so watch out for us in this year's local elections.

Cheers!

Are the Young, Free and Ugly the new oppressed?

Listening to Stasi Radio is a useful way of gaining an insight into how the other lot think and hey I pay the compulsory licence fee so why not while it's there? A fascinating conversation broke out 2 weeks ago on the airwaves between a man who wanted to force marriage upon everybody (presumably by drawing lots amongst us singletons) and a cohabitee with kids who seemed nice enough and saw tying the knot as a lifestyle choice she had chosen not to make.

"Marriage is best" apparently - people whose parents stay married regardless of whether they can still stand each other do better in education and thus have better employment prospects. What the Tory/religious/busybody tendency invariably neglect to mention is that teenage pregnancies, addiction problems and their social side effects (i.e. single parenthood and broken homes) tend to spike in areas with failing comprehensive schools and subsequently low aspiration.

These houses of broken dreams have made a niche of unleashing illiterate and innumerate young men into a society where work is scarce in a failing economy but welfare is everywhere you look. The reality is it is the social ills and the lack of opportunity that are feeding single parenthood and broken marriages, not, as the Tories would have you believe, the other way round.

But Iain Duncan Smith, a good man who is right every now and then, has decided that the real issue is that not enough of us are getting hitched, or into a civil partnership if you're that way out, and I thought, "it didn't take the Tories long did it?."

In the past, their pet hate was gay people, most clearly illustrated by the introduction of the repulsive Section 28 in 1986. So last year, in his attempt to convince us all he was some sort of 'liberal', Dave turned up at Mardi Gras and Pride, apologising for the law and promising any new tax break or benefit for marriage would apply to civil partnerships too.

However, nobody becomes and stays a Conservative for no good reason. As a breed, they are a judgemental lot (I'd know from being in CF for two years) and I always got the impression that they had a league table of 'ways of life' that they kept in their pocket or at least mentally. "Married, two kids, churchgoer, captain of local cricket team" was at the top, while "gay, single, no ties" was rock bottom. Now in a marriage of convenience between Cameron and the 'pink and proud' community, it is the unmarried hetrosexual who finds himself as the scum of the Tory earth.

When people talk about giving a handout to someone, I never hear it asked, "ah yes but who is paying for it?. Who is putting the money in the pot and walking away so someone else can take it?" Personally, I find it obscene that a single person on a modest income should subsidse the lifestyle choice of a couple who may be on thrice the takehome pay of the individual funding the largesse. It has already been accepted that the money is highly unlikely to steer a couple one way or the other, so it can only be a highly expensive gesture that does marginal damage to some and no good to anybody.

Once we get to work on the real issues, these questions tend to take care of themselves - personally the idea of getting married doesn't interest me at this point in time, and when IDS and his friends act like the street pushers of the tied knot, its appeal becomes even less.

Sorry Students - the Statists let you down

When discussing LPUK policy with a distinctly statist friend of mine a couple of weeks ago, we got onto the subject of welfare reform, and explored our basic aim of incrementally rolling back a great deal of the welfare state. He said to me in a rather animated fashion "look Daz, I've been paying into the system, so if I lose my job tomorrow why should I not get the dole?". This brought to me that what we are really looking to do is renegotiate the terms and conditions between state and citizen in a way that we believe will benefit the individual in the long run, and was at the front of my thoughts while watching the first genuine riots seen in this country for many years.

The state currently guzzles almost half of GDP in Britain, a frightening statistic, and one which we all want to see gradually brought down to a figure that leaves a skeletal safety net while causing minimal infringement on people's ability to live prosperous, free and fulfilling lives. However, if one works from the assumption that big brother takes 45-50% of the cake, then I don't think it's unreasonable to say "yes I want an education and a state pension to come out of that - after all if you hadn't taken the money from me/my parents that is what I/they would have spent it on". Not everybody has even a basic grasp of economics, and the importance of risk vs reward equations in driving growth in the private sector. Nor is it fair to expect everyone to read Milton Friedman...the Welfarists of Labour and the Corporatist Tories have lied through their teeth to people and tried to run an unsustainable system for decades.

Now we are where we are, and the students of today wonder why the education that had been 'free' to their parents (who had the same 'tax-welfare contract') is no longer free to them. They were misled, and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when the system finally imploded. Yes I feel sorry for them.

The conversation people always seem to have is "do we want a health system run on NHS principles?", "do we want comprehensive education directed from the centre?" and "do you want taxation to fund a state pension?". Scared of change or that their taxes will not be cut in line with reduced state provision, many answer "yes". What is very rarely if ever asked, certainly not in the statist media, is "is that model sustainable given the country we have now, and the changing demographics from the birth of welfarism 60 years ago?". I'm no economist but even a layman can see that what we need more than anything is real growth, a rapid reduction in the relative size of the state in terms of spend, and a fundamental shift in what government takes from you and gives back in return.

In the short-term, perhaps we should go back to the old arrangement of free degrees, but with only the best and brightest doing them (this is purely a personal view and not LPUK policy), Further downstream, allowing parents to keep more of their hard-earned will mean that many will be able to look at these choices themselves more proactively, whereas the challenge for us will be seeing the best of the American model adopted over here. Nobody who gets a place at Harvard ends up declining it because of their background and encouraging a climate of social mobility out of the rubble of the present will not be easy. Neither will re-visiting the state-citizen contract that has been in place since 1945, but when something is not nice, that normally means it is necessary.

Press Release Relating to the Electoral Commission

This afternoon the following email was received from the Electoral Commission and is their considered opinion on Vince Cable's attempt to remove Andrew Withers as Leader of the Libertarian Party through the Courts.

The current proceedings taken against you is a matter for the Courts to decide. If the party makes an application to appoint you as Leader, then we shall consider the application in accordance with PPERA taking account of any implications of the Court decision. If approved, we shall update the party's registered entry.

So the considered opinion of the Electoral Commission is that the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills has the right to determine who shall and who shall not be the Leader or an officer of a political party.

Also that it is the Electoral Commission's considered opinion that it is up a Court to decide whether Andrew Withers will be the elected leader of a registered political party, not the members, and that the Electoral Commission will approve an 'application' from the Party, not a notification from the members that a new Leader has been elected.

Freedom of Association has been the bedrock of our Parliamentary Democracy, under the Coalition that will be decided by the Government.
Ends

The media and pro-royal sychophancy - pass the prozac

So Prince William and Kate Middleton are getting married...good for them I suppose. The refusal of many, this writer included, to acknowledge the validity of the monarchy as an institution should not extend to out and out hatred of the individuals within it and it is clear that Wills is marrying the love of his life. This at least makes a pleasant change from some of the recent history within the palace, although the attempts by some in the media to claim that this is the monarchy 're-inventing' itself have been rather amusing. Kate Middleton may not be an absolute toff or have actual blue blood running through her veins, but she hardly qualifies as 'common as muck' either. This is another instance of the mainstream media and their curious love affair with the elite - watching the hysteria over the last few days has been at best perplexing and, more realistically, enough to drive any sane meritocrat up the wall.

Watching and listening to the BBC or Sky News, or reading any of the major news publications, one would think that there was not a soul on these isles who was not overcome by the news that an immensely posh young man and a slightly less posh young lady were finally tying the knot. You could be forgiven for believing that those deprived of work, hope and aspiration by the failed corporate state would forget their failed search for purpose and income and rejoice in the 'wonderful news' that would 'cheer up the nation'. So David Cameron slept on the mall the day before Charles and Di wed...he really should have kept this to himself. Who are these people who take such delight in toadying to the establishment? Do they not have lives, interests and hobbies of their own? (then again, this is a man whose idea of rebellion was trashing a restaurant with his Bullingdon club mates then getting daddy to pay for the damage). Having heard that 'Britons have never had it so good' in the same week, can a kind contributor confirm that we have not all been taken on some obscene 1950s time warp?

Hearing Chris Evans refer those not taken in by it all as 'a few sad republicans' this week was infuriating but perhaps not surprising. Evans is a lot more intelligent than he looks or sounds, but his journey from hip pioneer of avante-garde television and radio 15 years ago to safe-as-houses replacement for Wogan on Stasi radio is clear evidence that 'growing up' is not always a good thing and that 'normality' turns young people into tired old ones at an alarming pace. This writer has written an e-mail to Evans reminding him of his duty to report on the news with fairness and impartiality and will of course blog his reply on here should one arrive. Moreover, if the day of the wedding is declared a public holiday as has been mooted, this writer will be making a point of turning up at his place of work, even if it is only to twiddle his thumbs and browse the internet.

Us subjects/peasants are, one presumes, supposed to be eternally grateful for the extra day off - sounds like a pretty pathetic bribe for monarchist support if you ask me. If enough of us refuse to take the bait and turn up for work at the usual time, our managers will be forced to get out of bed even if it is only to send us all home. Should it become a nationwide thing then the pro-royal media would have to report it. And that would really stick in the craw, believe me.

...................................

EDITOR'S NOTE

Just as a point of clarification, I'd like to make it clear that the Libertarian Party is not a republican organisation - but we're also not a royalist organisation either. Some libertarians are royalist and some are republicans, and when the Libertarian Party was formed we made a deliberate decision not to have a party line on this particular issue. Let's face it, there are more urgent things to take care of, like crime, unemployment, taxation, debt and the police state. I personall would like Britain to become a republic, but that's an issue that goes beyond party politics - if it happens in my lifetime, it will have to happen as a result of a national referendum. I see no other legitimate way to bring about such a basic constitutional change.

In the meantime, we live in the system as it exists now - and when the Libertarian Party meets for its AGM on Saturday, I'm sure I won't be the only libertarian republican who will raise a glass to the future happiness of Mr Windsor and his bride.

The Libertarian Party and State Oppression

The following was copied from Gregg Beaman's blog, "A Brief Encounter":

Below is an open letter to John Bercow written by a friend and colleague of mine, Andrew Withers. Andrew is a founder member of the Libertarian Party and is standing, unopposed, for the party leadership later this month. I have been happy to support Andrew and continue to do so despite Vince 'Big Brother' Cable's actions. The actions of the Coalition in this instance just prove why we need a libertarian party, and why the Liberal Democrats are anything but liberal:

Mr John Bercow
Speaker to the House of Commons

Dear Mr Bercow

On the 12th November 2010 the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation & Skills Dr Vince Cable MP instructed a firm of solicitors, Osborne Clarke of Bristol to write to District Judge Watson of the Bristol Registry requiring that I have leave of the Court to act as elected Leader of the Libertarian Party, further more and I quote:

‘Our client does not consider that Mr Withers has currently demonstrated sufficient need for leave in respect of the entity’

The Libertarian Party is a registered party within the meaning of the Political Parties,Elections and Referendums Act 2000, and I have a mandate from the members of the party to act as the party leader as from the 27th November, what further sufficient need do I require ?

It is extraordinary that a Minister of the Crown has made such a legal move against the leader of a minor party and creates a dangerous precedent constitutionally. Can you please advise when government ministers and the executive think that they can act in such a manner, and interfere with the internal workings of another party through the Courts.

Can you please urgently advise as Chairman of the Speakers Committee under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act, when such powers were transfered from the Electoral Commission and to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation & Skills.

I have no intention of seeking the leave of the Court to act as the leader of the Libertarian Party and I suspect this act is both illegal and ultra vires on the part of the Secretary of State. I am urgently seeking Counsels opinion on this letter.

I would be grateful for your urgent observations by return.

Yours sincerely

Andrew P Withers

Leader Designate
Libertarian Party

In the latest turn of events in Andrew's four year legal tussles with The Department of Business, Innovation & Skills, a District Judge in the Bristol Registry has ordered that he should list all of the companies and organisations that he is an executive member of so that it can be decided by the Court whether he should be given permission to continue. Amongst the organisations specifically named is the Libertarian Party.

On the 22nd September 2010, the Information Commissioner ruled that when the Department was being run by Mandelson it withheld evidence that Andrew Withers wished to rely on in Court, and that they should release it ‘without further delay’. That ruling has so far been ignored by The Secretary of State’s officials. If the order is further ignored by this Friday, Andrew Withers will be seeking a Court Order to compel the Secretary Of State to comply with the ICO order under sec7 (9) Data Protection Act 1998.

Andrew's local MP is Dr Liam Fox and has been extremely supportive in a case that he has called in a personal telephone call a ‘scandal’, and found time in the midst of the strategic defence review to have personal meeting with Ed Davey MP the responsible Minister in the coalition Government on the 27th September 2010 to discuss the case. After which Ed Davey has ordered a review into the case by senior officials and a meeting has been suggested with senior officials to try to resolve the situation.

Andrew is currently writing a book about his experiences, and admits that new chapters are being added as one man’s fight against a politicised bureaucracy continues into a fifth year.

The story started in 2006 when a French company that Andrew was a gerant (director) of was illegally placed into liquidation by its French Director in contravention of the company statuts and on a perjured statement of affairs. The Court appointed Receiver was paid 8000€ to bury the company, and the French Director made off with the assets and finished goods . An investigating French barrister appointed by Andrew Withers visited the Receiver in Coutances and noted that there were no accounts, invoices or supporting documentation. The Barrister described the situation as the worst case of corporate fraud he had seen in over forty years of practice.

The unfortunate direct consequence of this fraud was that it brought down the British company down as well and it ceased trading in 2006 unfortunately four customers and a number of corporate creditors lost money.

The company was wound up in 2007, and Andrew presented himself to the Official Receiver with supporting documentation and statements from the French Investigating Barrister as to the veracity of the illegal winding up of the company by the French Director causing the failure of the company. He was complemented on the professionalism of the presentation of the narrative and whilst he could not promise that nothing more would be heard from the Insolvency Service, he was satisfied with the narrative.

In October 2007 , Andrew became one of the five founding members of the Libertarian Party sickened by the growth of the security state established by Blair and continued by Brown and the fact that the State was out of control and the State was absorbing more and more taxpayers funds. Three days later the run on Northern Rock began.

From this point the story started to take a bizarre and disturbing twist.

■Despite the French fraud being reported to Avon and Somerset Police and the Insolvency Service which is part of the then Business,Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. A furious French Colleague contacted Andrew to report that the French Director had just been given an award presented by the British Ambassador to Paris and Lord Digby-Jones (GOAT)

■From redacted documents secured under the Freedom of Information Act, the French Director started lobbying to have Andrew investigated in April 2008.

■In June 2008 he received a letter from the Insolvency Service in Plymouth to say he was under investigation under the terms of the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986, this despite them having no accounts because they could not access the electronic copies of the SAGE accounts.

■In November 2008 the Assistant Official Receiver confirmed in an email that in their view the French subsidiary was not part of their investigations as their advice was that it was not possible for French companies to have foreign shareholders !

■The conduct of the investigation was the source of endless abuse, the interviewer was balefully ignorant of commercial law, gave off the appearance of being a former policeman, told a number of direct lies and allowed Andrew to look at a former employee’s personal bank statements and files in contravention of the Data Protection Act, then could offer no explanation what those statements and files were doing with the company documentation.

■The Company’s former accountants were threatened with investigation, to the extent that they took legal advice.

■Mandelson was appointed Secretary of State 3rd October 2008, it is his decision to seek disqualification orders against company directors. Liam Fox MP met Andrew and was shown all of the documentation relating to the criminal fraud. Fox lobbied Mandelson and was rebuffed.

■Further evidence was supplied to the Secretary of State in July 2009, including witness statements and French Court documents to show the extent of the French Fraud and the effect it had had on the British Company. All of this evidence was rejected and returned to Andrew unread.

■From redacted documents received by Andrew under FOI , the Official Receiver’s recommendation to move forward to Proceedings was rejected for lack of evidence in May 2009, saying it ‘required more work done on it’

■In August 2009 with days to spare before being statute barred, proceedings were authorised by Secretary of State Mandelson against Andrew to be disbarred as a director for eight years. If Andrew was so minded to sign a confession and to say a false set of accounts prepared by the Secretary of State were true (that omitted the French subsidiary) , the ban would be reduced to seven years.

■Andrew and his lawyers refused to sign, and tried to negotiate with the appointed lawyers to no avail to drop the case.

■When the evidence in the case was finally released to Andrew it soon became apparent that-

■The winding up order made against the company was made by somebody who was not a creditor. The Official Receiver knew this and sought to hide the supporting documentation and invoices that had been altered

■The French Director had supplied the Official Receiver with forged Delivery Notes, the Official Receiver made no attempt to verify them.

■The Official Receiver had made no attempt to contact the Court appointed Receiver in Coutances, but entered into very friendly correspondence with the French Director. The Official Receiver allowed the transfer of assets , goods and cash to the French Director’s company at nil value.

It costs not less than £50 000 to mount a defence in actions such as this, Andrew’s legal insurers refused to consider this was an action they would cover, it does not take long to burn through legal fees, and with money running short Andrew compromised and settled on a voluntary undertaking with the Secretary of State for five and a half years not to act as a company Director with an undertaking that a s17 hearing would be heard by the District Judge before the undertaking took affect on July 13th 2010. The Court Order of 22nd June confirms that hearing never took place because the Secretary of State two days before the hearing in July had issued no instructions to counsel to attend and had broken the settlement by rushing into print and online trumpeting their success on the 1st July. The District Judge then signed an order to allow Andrew to continue to act as a Director in two designated companies, an order that was renewed on the 11th of October 2010 pending the outcome of the next full hearing.

Andrew released the following personal statement in October:

“I first wish to repudiate the voluntary undertaking I signed on 22nd June 2010, the accounts so presented were false, the Official Receiver knew they were false, I knew they were false, they were based on perjury in both French and English Courts, based on forged documents supplied by the French Director who colluded with the Official Receiver to transfer assets at nil value. I simply signed to end the attrition of costs by an overbearing State and because of the effect this war of attrition has had on my family. That is the end of one battle, but I have not given up the fight in this war.

I am grateful for the support of my legal teams in both France and England, to Liam Fox MP and to the members of the NCC of the Libertarian Party who refused to accept my offered resignation last June as Treasurer and Deputy Leader of the Party, and that despite the Court Order of the 11th October 2010 examining whether the poorly written, oppressive anti business CDDA 1986 can extend its authority over companies that are not registered in this country and to political parties and to charitable organisations, I will continue to seek the leadership of the Libertarian Party. Therefore it is only fair that all members are aware of this cloud that hangs over me before casting their vote.

I welcome the intervention of Ed Davey MP and look forward to the results of his review and for the opportunity of a meeting with senior officials to present the evidence that Dr Liam Fox has seen and quite rightly has called a scandal.

This will not however stop me seeking a Court order on the 25th October against the Secretary of State following the ruling of the Information Commissioner of the 22nd September. I will also be launching a civil action against the Secretary of State, Official Receiver and French Director, as both a creditor and shareholder of my former company for the wrongful transfer of assets , equipment and cash to the French Director at nil value.

I can however only express my displeasure at the lack of action by the Avon & Somerset Chief Constable in this case in relation to the Fraud and Theft that has occurred. The constant pleading of lack of resources has further undermined my confidence in Law enforcement.

I was a Classical Liberal before I help found the Party, my experiences of politicised public servants under the last administration have only confirmed that I must continue with that fight. I am confident the Parliament never intended the CDDA Act to be applied to foreign companies over which they have no jurisdiction , nor to political parties which is a breach of basic political Liberty, and I am confident that the Judge will come to the same conclusion "

ENDS

I will be at the Party AGM on November 27th, look forward to greeting Andrew as our new Party Leader and will support him in any way I can in the face of state oppression. It seems that Cable is continuing the practice of Mandelsonian dark arts.

Woolas Found Guilty

The former immigration minister's General Election win, by 103 votes, has been declared void.

Candidate Elwyn Watkins launched the legal challenge, using a rarely-used election law, in response to a pamphlets produced by the Labour team.

Mr Woolas won the seat by just 103 votes.

The specially convened election court, chaired by two High Court judges, heard he sought to "make the white folk angry" by suggesting there was a Muslim campaign to kick him out.

Mr Woolas denied the claim and argued he was right to say Mr Watkins was in a "pact with the devil" because he failed to condemn the alleged campaign.

Former Lord Chancellor Charlie Falconer told Sky News Mr Woolas had not been convicted of a criminal offence as it was an election court.

"Inevitably the consequences of there being a successful challenge in an electoral court for the first time in 100 years on the basis of fraud is bound to have ramifications right through the system," he said.

During the hearings, Mr Watkins' QC Helen Mountfield, said: "Mr Woolas' team had made an overt and, some may say, shocking decision to set out to 'make the white folk angry' by depicting an alleged campaign by those who they described generically as Asians to 'take Phil out' and then present Mr Watkins as in league with them.

She accused Mr Woolas of making "false statements as part of a series of reckless and irresponsible steps in this campaign - using doctored photographs, misrepresenting facts, stooping even to fomenting racial divisions and tensions".

Sky News

The election has to be re run, Woolas is patently not fit to hold public office. The rotting stench of the last Labour administration still hangs in the air.